


Fated Finale (Sorin v Nahiri ~ Ravnica: Endgame)

by cbjango



Category: Magic: The Gathering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-03-08 19:18:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18900988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cbjango/pseuds/cbjango
Summary: As the trapped planes walkers fight the legions of Eternals in the streets of Ravnica, a second equally-anticipated battle rages on the rooftops above. Sorin Markov, a vampire from the plane of Innistrad and a pre-Mending planeswalker, faces off against his once-protege Nahiri, a kor lithomancer from the plane of Zendikar, in a final confrontation. Ravnica, and the Multiverse at large, holds its breath as two gods battle one another in a grudge match 1,000 years in the making.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I was really disappointed by the lack of Sorin and Nahiri content in the new Magic book, "Ravnica," (written by Greg Weisman) so I decided to write my own battle between the two planeswalkers. It was one of my main goals to write a story that would neither interfere with the established (albeit disappointing) canon set by the new novel as well as be consistent enough to be able to be inserted into the book's storyline at one's discretion. I had a lot of fun writing this one and I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. All comments, criticisms, and thoughts are always welcome.

The two ancient planeswalkers had fled the meeting of captive planeswalkers to face one another on the rooftops of Ravnica. Sorin stood a good fifty feet from his one-time student, Parasite Blade in hand and his white hair blowing in the wind. He wore a look of nonchalance that masked an anger black as sin and a hate for Nahiri just as potent. His arch-nemesis looked both bemused and on edge, as if she were simultaneously trying to come up with a clever joke and watching to see what the millenia-old vampire lord would do.  
They stood there amidst the ruins of Ravnica for moments that seemed like eternity, contemplating the moment, before one of them finally spoke up.  
“I see you’re out of the wall,” Nahiri said, wearing a smile as false as she was.  
Sorin smiled, an act so uncharacteristic that it immediately set Nahiri on edge. “Yes, I am out of the wall.”  
“I had thought you would track me down and kill me when you got free. I never imagined a mere wall could defeat the great Sorin Markov.” Yes, damage his ego, Nahiri thought. The more unhinged he gets the better chance I have of beating him.  
“I took a slight detour to take back what belonged to me.” Sorin raised his right hand, showing Nahiri his eldritch blade. “You see, Nahiri, when someone wrongs me they get what they’re owed when the time comes.”  
Nahiri laughed. “Ah, yes, the Voldaren bitch who took your ‘wittle sword! Tell me, how did you pay her back?”  
“You’ll find out soon enough.”  
Sorin’s left hand flicked and a jet of black mana surged toward Nahiri. She laughed aloud at his feeble attempt to slay her. Did he not learn anything from our last bout, she wondered as she raised a roof tile and cement spike from the ground to intercept and block the slaying shadow. Nahiri clenched her own fist, sending her own mana out into the roof and made to impale Sorin’s leering figure as he charged another blast of mana when she felt a small tingle on the base of her neck, the reaction she felt from a disturbance in the dust in the air. She turned to her right and was saved from a savage swing of the Parasite Blade that would have certainly decapitated her had she not noticed at the last second. She did not escape unscathed, however, a deep gash now cut along the right side of her face barely missing her eye. Nahiri could feel that even from that tiny cut a large flow of mana was drained from her very being.  
Nahiri, in the single instance before she hit the ground and while Sorin was still finishing his swing, called upon the building itself and caused the half of the building Sorin was hovering over to rise swiftly from its foundations launching the vampire a building away with an almost comical crash. Nahiri used these few moments of respite to clutch her face in determined agony, summoning white mana to heal, or at the very least close, the wound. She looked back over to where the original black mana attack had come from to see the smiling Sorin disappear in a blue haze.  
Nahiri grimaced and turned to where the vampire had landed. “An illusion? Since when could you do that?”  
Sorin rose like a spectre amidst the clouds of dust and debris, sending a pulse of mana to push the dust several feet away from him in all directions, else Nahiri could have attempted to choke him with the dust. The planeswalker swung his sword around in his hand as a mockery and called out to Nahiri across their battlefield. “A small trick I gleaned from Jace Beleren on Innistrad.”  
Nahiri was baffled. Sorin admitted to learning something from someone? “Who’s that?”  
Sorin looked off at the other, vastly more important battle taking place a mile or two away between the assembled planeswalkers and the elder dragon. “Well, if this day keeps going the way it is, you may get to meet him,” Sorin said, now turning to look Nahiri dead in the eyes. “In hell.”  
Sorin’s feet lifted into the air and he levitated over to the building Nahiri stood upon, drawing his blade with both hands. “Shall we finish our bout, one last time?”  
Nahiri glared stone daggers at her one-time mentor and former friend. “Let’s.”  
She flung her left arm out towards Sorin and retracted her middle finger; the roof collapsed where he stood, sending the vampire plummeting thirteen stories below her. With her right hand she called out to the neighboring spire, bending the massive building into a stone spear to gore her rival. The tower groaned as it curved unnaturally like a bent tree limb down towards Sorin with a resounding reverberation as the air was pushed away by the plummeting tower.  
The tower exploded with a blast of white and black mana, sending ancient stone flying through the air towards the other battlefield. Nahiri looked up from the explosion to see a pair of red eyes inches from her face belonging to a wraith, hand wreathed in smoky death reaching out to the kor woman. She leaned backwards to avoid the sweeping attack as the taloned hand swung overhead. Nahiri gathered the dust in the air into a small stone knife in a split second and thrust it at the vampire with her off hand. Sorin’s own off hand met the knife just inches from his stomach, the blade shattering in his hand; but this act drew his attention from a second attack coming not from Nahiri herself but from behind him, a stone spear surging from behind to stab him in his ankle. Sorin howled in pain and punched Nahiri in the throat sending her flying into the street below.  
~~~  
Sorin grimaced and reached down with his left hand to pull the stone spike out of his ankle and inspected the wound. Damn! He thought, she destroyed the bones. I need time to heal or I might… He pushed the thought from his mind. Sorin Markov hadn’t felt the fear of death in millenia, not since he was a child living with his grandfather, Edgar Markov. He was, after all, a planeswalker - at least, back when that still meant something. Now, every upjumped half-devil and thief in the Multiverse was one. It seemed like everywhere he turned there was just some idiot with a touch of magic just waiting to annoy him with their delusions of grandeur.   
He channeled white mana in the area of the wound and focused on mending the bones rather than closing the wound. I’ll have to levitate until my ankle heals. It should only take a -  
Sorin’s thoughts were interrupted by a stone blade hurtling swiftly towards his chest from the streets below. Sorin moved to parry with the Parasite Blade but as he blocked one blade, sending it careening towards the second battlefield below, he noticed a flurry of additional blades being launched from the cobblestones below at Nahiri’s feet. Sorin shifted his stance at lightning speed to block one strike, then a second, but failed to catch the third as it caught him in his left shoulder in the space between his pauldron and his breastplate, goring and knocking him off balance as he fell off the roof. Though his armor protected him from fatal damage from the fall, it did little to soften the impact as evidenced by the sharp cracking sound as Sorin hit the street. Damn! Sorin thought, that was a rib. Sorin slowly struggled to his feet as he heard a loud yet feminine laugh amidst the screams of the general populace.  
“I will admit, Sorin, that punch hurt like hell,” Nahiri said with a pained grin, “though I am curious how that sword feels in your shoulder.”  
Sorin’s right arm grabbed the hilt of the stone sword in his shoulder and ripped the longsword from his pale flesh, this act met with a gush of blood escaping from the wound. “It hurts like hell,” Sorin admitted with a rasp, baring his fangs in anger at Nahiri.  
Nahiri grinned and lunged at Sorin with a stone blade. “Then this’ll hurt a lot worse!” she yelled as she leapt towards him with murderous intent. Sorin, despite his wounds and mana exhaustion, managed to raise his sword with one hand to meet Nahiri's with a scream as the steel kissed the stone in a homicidal fervor. The two clashed again and again and again in the street, the cries of the Gateless and the utter desolation of Ravnica going unnoticed amidst the onslaught of spells and steel and stone.  
Nahiri swung her stone blade in a leftward arc to strike at Sorin’s exposed side but the bloodlord caught the blow with his left arm gauntlet. As Nahiri reeled from the deflection, Sorin pooled deadly amounts of black mana into his Parasite Blade causing it to glow a sinister and unholy light as he jabbed the blade at Nahiri’s right leg. Cobblestones shot up from the ground like a rocket to slam into the blade; yet the stones were for naught as the black mana and the nature of the Parasite Blade caused the cobbles to crumble to dust before they could fully stop the blow from Sorin. The blade thrust forward unmolested from Nahiri’s failed counter and pierced her leg at the calf. Nahiri cried out but the scream was cut short by Sorin’s left hand clamping tightly around the lithomancer’s throat, raising her up off of the ground as he levitated high into the air with his captive planeswalker.  
Sorin’s fear of heights was vastly overshadowed by his absolute hate of his former apprentice as he now held her among the clouds and spires of Ravnica.  
“You have lost, Nahiri,” he said in a grim tone. He readied his blade with his right, ready to gut her like a fish then and there. “And with this final blow I exact my revenge.”  
Nahiri thrashed in his grasp. “Vengeance for who, Sorin?” she croaked, her eyes bulging from the constriction. “For those vampires? For Innistrad?”  
Sorin’s face was basked in the glow of the sun but even so his face was a mask of shadow. “For Avacyn,” he said softly.  
Sorin went for the killing blow.  
~~~  
END OF PART ONE OF TWO


	2. Sorin. v Nadir ~ Ravnica: Endgame Part 2

Nahiri writhed in the vampire’s grasp high above Ravnica, struggling to stay alive. If he doesn’t kill me with that sword the fall will definitely kill me from here, she thought amidst her agony.  
Sorin looked his once-student over with a face devoid of emotion as he said, “You have lost, Nahiri. And with this blow I exact my revenge.”  
Nahiri could have laughed if she wasn’t in so much pain. It was so Sorin to brood over his own meager losses whilst ignoring the suffering of others. He had disregarded the call to fight the Eldrazi on Zendikar, he had thrown her away like garbage into the Helvault when he was over with her, and now he had the temerity to imply that he alone deserves vengeance.  
“Vengeance for who, Sorin?” she said with a meager attempt at putting steel in her voice that she imagined simply came off as desperation. “For those vampires? For Innistrad?”  
Nothing in the last several millennia could have surprised her more, startled her even, than Nahiri seeing a single tear fall from Sorin Markov’s eye into the blue void beneath them as he said with a sadness, “For Avacyn.”  
Sorin’s fist opened, and Nahiri plunged through the sky, but perhaps the mere moments before death were what gave her the time to think before she died.  
Nahiri had lived her life with honor, or at least as much honor as an original planeswalker could. She never tried to interfere with the affairs of the thousands of planes she traveled until one of the planes she traveled to was drained of life by the Eldrazi. She watched in silence, cursed silence, as the inhabitants of that world were ripped away from reality as the brood devoured the plane. On that day, as the plane cracked and shook and was slowly ripped apart, Nahiri vowed that she would never allow another world to fall victim to the cold and brutal fate that the Eldrazi brought with them. She searched for those who not only could aid her but those who would choose to help her. She found Ugin and Sorin Markov. Ugin had always been distant towards her and especially Sorin; but the vampire took the young Nahiri under his wing, showing her the ways of a planeswalker and the planes of the Multiverse. He was more than a mentor; he was a friend. When the day came for their plan to trap the Eldrazi was to commence, Nahiri offered up her own plane, her home, as the prison for the Eldrazi not out of any strategic advantage of Zendikar but out of the fact that in the event that she ever forgot her duty she would be forced to return to save her home. And so the Eldrazi were sealed on Zendikar in their stone prison with Nahiri as their stone warden. Then, millennia later, she awoke from her slumber to find the Eldrazi breaking out of their cage… and no vampire or dragon to be seen. Nahiri, having seen the destruction of countless worlds by the Eldrazi, left her home to its inevitable demise and saved herself, searching for Sorin to bring him back to aid her in the defense of her home. But when she finally found her old mentor, her old friend, he just… turned his back on her and his duty. He cast aside all doubts and all failures with a flick of his wrist and the cocksure arrogance that only a vampire could have. So, Nahiri tried to knock some sense into him, get him to see the error of his ways when he just sicced his pet angel on her, sealing her away for… well, what felt like an eternity.  
When she was finally set free by the necromancer Liliana Vess, Nahiri returned to her home, Zendikar, to find continents turned to dust, its people scattered to the wind (some of them quite literally), and the Eldrazi roaming unmolested destroying all she held dear. It was in the obliterated ruins of where Nahiri was born that she swore vengeance against her former mentor and friend. He had turned aside from his duty and trapped Nahiri; by doing so, he had consigned Zendikar to its destruction and had stopped Nahiri from doing anything to prevent it. Sorin Markov would pay for both his actions and inaction. Nahiri went back to Innistrad and set about using the very Eldrazi that Sorin had allowed to escape to destroy his home. She went to his fortress and ancestral home, Markov Manor, and twisted it beyond all imagination and even poisoned the mind of his pet angel, Avacyn, as the ultimate insult.  
Yet her absolute triumph over her traitorous mentor felt… hollow. Even as she watched the final chip of her vengeance fall into place she felt empty inside. But now, as she fell from the sky to the buildings below, she felt… remorse for her actions. Nahiri looked around her at the world-city of Ravnica and felt the wool be removed from her eyes to blind her with the truth: Nahiri’s petty vendetta against Sorin killed so many people, destroyed so many homes, and for what? Vengeance? But what good is vengeance when it tastes so bitter a draught when finally achieved? Right now, even as we fight each other in mortal combat, this plane is being destroyed by a dragon and his zombie army. Yet… yet, despite the power we planeswalkers have to save ourselves, there that ragtag group of planeswalkers are trying to save the plane, many of them already having lain down their lives for others!  
And then it clicked in her head: How can I be here trying to avenge my home when before me is a world, a home, I can still save!  
Nahiri roared in defiance of her imminent death with newfound revelation and purpose, the ground a hundred feet below her softening into sand and rushing up to catch Nahiri as she slammed into the street below. She rose from the sand with a look of absolute determination as she watched Sorin lower himself to the ground, blade in hand, ready to strike her down yet again.  
“Wait!” Nahiri shouted at Sorin as he readied his blade to try and decapitate her. “This is pointless.”  
Sorin paused a moment, confused. Is she now willing to lower herself to such a degree that she would consider begging me for her life? No, that’s not her way; she must be stalling. I should be wary of any more of her tricks. “What now, Nahiri? What are you plotting?”  
Nahiri groaned as she staggered forward in pain across the cobblestone. Sorin saw her move and raised his blade in riposte stance. “Sorin… enough of this. This… continuous cycle of vengeance… will get us nowhere. I realize that nothing I say or do can ever pay back what I did to you. I destroyed your home in blind anger and vengeance… I killed Avacyn, though I have no idea what she was to you I can see how much she meant to you. I have had a revelation, Sorin. This place, Ravnica, it’s home to so many innocent people and their home is being destroyed right now as we fight our petty war; it’s just like Zendikar… and Innistrad…”  
Sorin lowered his blade slightly but kept his black eyes in a perpetual soul-piercing gaze on her. Nahiri continued. “I’m done fighting you, Sorin; I’m going to go join the battle and defend this place… and I want you to join me. If you are still craving your vengeance, then strike me down now but I’m done. But if you join me and help me save Ravnica… then we can talk this over.” Nahiri paused and looked pleadingly into his eyes. “We were master and student, once. Allies. Friends. In respect of that past that we share, we should talk this all over after this is done.”  
Nahiri took one last look at her former mentor and turned away towards the battle, summoning her remaining strength and walked as fast as she could to reach the battlefield.  
Sorin watched her go in silence for a few moments until she turned down a destroyed street corner, disappearing from view, before he slid the Parasite Blade back into its scabbard. The healing spell he had cast when he dropped Nahiri out of the sky had finished its work stitching the hole in between his arm and chest back together and his ankle was already completely healed from the mana he stole from Nahiri. The vampire breathed a sigh of peace and left the street for the rooftops going in a direction even he knew not.


End file.
